MANILA - The Commission on Elections has selected the 234 areas where the random manual audit (RMA) of the automated election system will be held on election day.
A requirement of the automated elections law, the RMA involves the manual counting of votes in the selected precincts to double check the results of the count of the precinct count optical scan machines.
"SEC 29. Random Manual Audit. - Where the AES is used, there shall be a random manual audit in one precinct per congressional district randomly chosen by the Commission in each province and city. Any difference between the automated and manual count will result in the determination of root cause and initiate a manual count for those precincts affected by the computer or procedural error."
Unlike the RMA in the 2010 elections where the 5 precincts per district were chosen on election day through a manual raffle, the RMA precincts for 2013 are being chosen ahead of election day through an automated random selection procedure.
In addition, the RMA will only cover one precinct per district in 2013, instead of the 5 precincts per district in 2010.
The Comelec random manual audit committee is chaired by Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting chairperson Henrietta de Villa while National Statistics Office Administrator Carmelita Ericta and Comelec Internal Auditor Agnes Carreon are members.
Christian Robert Lim is the commissionner in charge of the RMA.
Using an ARSP laptop, De Villa initiated the ARSP to select the 234 cities and municipalities today. The process took only seconds.
After the list was generated, verified and signed, 8 copies were made and the laptop sealed.
The laptop will be reused on Sunday to choose the actual precincts that will be covered by the RMA.
Two sets of lists were generated today and will be generated Sunday---the priority list which will be the main list---and the contingency list of areas where the RMA will happen in case anything happens to prevent the audit in the precincts in the priority list.
De Villa said the 2-part selection is to ensure that the RMA teams who will conduct the audit will be able to preposition themselves at the precincts ahead of time.
The ARSP was developed by the RMAC. The software contains routine programs, functions and algorithms developed in visual studio environment and MySQL database system.
The same is subject to source code review by the political parties and accredited interest groups.
source: www.abs-cbnnews.com
